5

Leah

Halloween
Tuesday, October 23rd, 1989
Lucy missing 1 month, 2 days

Mom turned the porch lights off early tonight. The police have urged everyone to stay in for Halloween, but she was worried there might be some brave trick-or-treaters, so after dinner, she snapped the shutters closed, killed the lights in the entryway, kissed me on the forehead, and went upstairs to watch TV.

I’m in Dad’s study—a small nook just off the den.

He hasn’t slept at home in over a week. He can’t bear to be in the house anymore, to look at the walls that are filled with pictures of Lucy, or to eat in the breakfast room—the last place he saw her. Mom doesn’t know this, but while she was fixing dinner, I snuck upstairs to call him at his office where he’s been sleeping.

“Hey baby,” he answered, his voice slurry with alcohol.

“Dad,” I said, cradling the phone to my ear, “can you come home, just for tonight? Please? It’s Halloween. For me?”

He promised he would, so I’m up waiting for him, sitting on his brown leather loveseat, sawing my way through a bag of creamy candy corn that Grandad brought by earlier today.

Dad’s an architect, and his study is a light-filled room with high, rectangular windows running the length of the walls. Through the windows you see a sea of green trees. It’s a calming room. And modern compared to the rest of our old rambling, two-story Colonial.

Lucy and I used to love playing in here. We’d sit at the slate-green drafting table, shoulder to shoulder, and doodle, using Dad’s silver compass to make big, perfect circles. We loved all of his tools and instruments, especially the giant pink eraser, the way it became red-hot as we ran it across the paper and shed its crumbly shavings, which Lucy used to scatter over sheets of construction paper coated with glue.

Just next to the drafting table, perched on top of an ornate, black lacquer desk, is Dad’s computer, a Commodore 64. He’s always been fascinated with electronics, so we were one of the first families in town to own one. Lucy and I really didn’t know how to use it—and we weren’t supposed to mess with it—but we’d pretend we did and would spend Sunday afternoons playing secretary.

Light is streaming through the windows, and though it’s cool outside, the room is warm and toasty as the sun sets, making me feel drowsy. I stare out the window and a breeze combs through our maple tree, shaking the leaves. On the windowsill there is a gold heart-framed picture of me and Lucy taken on our first camping trip at a nearby lake. In the picture, I’m carrying a four-year-old Lucy on my shoulders. She has pulled her grin wide with her index fingers, making a clownish face. We are underneath a feathery pine tree, next to our bright orange tent, and we’re wearing matching tube socks, to ward off chiggers. Our faces are hot-pink from the sun. One of a hundred weekends we spent like this together.

I stare at the photo, and reach out to touch Lucy’s face. “I won’t give up,” I say out loud. The room grows stuffy and orange with the setting sun, so I stretch out on the loveseat and drift off to sleep.

The house is dark. The only light in the study comes from the Commodore, the blinking orange cursor. The cursor starts to move; my name is being spelled out:

L E A H.

I grab the keyboard and start typing: Lucy! Is that you?

My heart thrums in my chest. The cursor blinks.

Y E S.

I can tell that it’s Lucy, that she’s typing with just her pointer finger, the only way she knows how. And the caps lock must be pressed down.

I MISS U. I MISS MOM AND DAD.

I quickly type: We miss you so much! We love you! Where are you?

I have so much to say but I’m afraid to type any more in case she’s trying to write me back. But the cursor just keeps blinking, blinking at me, a teasing, winking eye.

My breath is thin and my hands hover over the keys, but then the cursor starts moving again:

UNDERGROUND.
BY THE WOODS.

My fingers grow cold over the keyboard. I’m just about to ask more but the screen goes blank and the computer zaps off. I try to power it back up, but it won’t come on.

When I wake up, the study is dark with just a slice of moonlight turning the walls silver. My heartbeat is ragged and is pounding in my temples. The computer is on. I try to remember (but can’t) if it had been on before I fell asleep. I walk over to it and try to type to Lucy, but she doesn’t answer back.